Cornelia’s voice staggered and jumped like a cart in a bad road. It roundedcorners and turned back again and arrived nowhere. Granny stepped up in thecart very lightly and reached for the reins, but a man sat beside her and she knewhim by his hands, driving the cart. She did not look in his face, for she knewwithout seeing, but looked instead down the road where the trees leaned overand bowed to each other and a thousand birds were singing a Mass. She felt likesinging too, but she put her hand in the bosom of her dress and pulled out arosary, and Father Connolly murmured Latin in a very solemn voice and tickledher feet. My God, will you stop that nonsense? I’m a married woman. What ifhe did run away and leave me to face the priest by myself? I found another awhole world better. I wouldn’t have exchanged my husband for anybody exceptSt. Michael himself, and you may tell him that for me with a thank you in thebargain.

It was Hapsy she really wanted. She had to go a long way back through agreat many rooms toVnd Hapsy standing with a baby on her arm. She seemedto herself to be Hapsy also, and the baby on Hapsy’s arm was Hapsy and himselfand herself, all at once, and there was no surprise in the meeting. Then Hapsymelted from within and turnedWimsy as gray gauze and the baby was a gauzyshadow, and Hapsy came up close and said, “I thought you’d never come,” andlooked at her very searchingly and said, “You haven’t changed a bit!” They leanedforward to kiss, when Cornelia began whispering from a long way off, “Oh, isthere anything you want to tell me? Is there anything I can do for you?”

In her day she had kept a better house and had got more work done. Shewasn’t too old yet for Lydia to be driving eighty miles for advice when one ofthe children jumped the track, and Jimmy still dropped in and talked things over:“Now, Mammy, you’ve a good business head, I want to know what you thinkof this?. . . ” Old. Cornelia couldn’t change the furniture around without asking .Little things, little things! They had been so sweet when they were little. Grannywished the old days were back again with the children young and everythingto be done over. It had been a hard pull, but not too much for her. When shethought of all the food she had cooked, and all the clothes she had cut and sewed,and all the gardens she had made—well, the children showed it. There they were,made out of her, and they couldn’t get away from that. Sometimes she wanted tosee John again and point to them and say, Well, I didn’t do so badly, did I? Butthat would have to wait. That was for tomorrow. She used to think of him as aman, but now all the children were older than their father, and he would be achild beside her if she saw him now. It seemed strange and there was somethingwrong in the idea. Why, he couldn’t possibly recognize her. She had fenced in ahundred acres once, digging the post holes herself and clamping the wires withjust a negro boy to help. That changed a woman. John would be looking fora young woman with a peaked Spanish comb in her hair and the painted fan.Digging post holes changed a woman. Riding country roads in the winter whenwomen had their babies was another thing: sitting up nights with sick horses andsick negroes and sick children and hardly ever losing one. John, I hardly ever lostone of them! John would see that in a minute, that would be something he couldunderstand, she wouldn’t have to explain anything!